The Iron Division, National Guard of Pennsylvania, in the World War Part 3

At 12.30 o'clock, the German line belched forth the preliminary salvo of what the French afterward described as the most terrific bombardment of the war up to that time. The last German offensive had opened.

The gates to glory and to death swung wide for many a Pennsylvania lad that night.

That the French did not exaggerate in their characterization of the bombardment was shown in doc.u.ments taken later on captured prisoners.

Among these was a general order to the German troops a.s.suring them of victory, telling them that this was the great "friedensturm," or peace offensive, which was to force the Allies to make peace, and that, when the time came to advance, they would find themselves unopposed. The reason for this, said the order, was that the attack was to be preceded by an artillery preparation that would destroy completely all troops for twenty miles in front of the German lines. As a matter of fact, sh.e.l.ls fell twenty-five miles back of the Allied lines.

For mile on mile along that bristling line, the big guns gave tongue, not in gusts or intermittently, as had been the case for days, but continuously. Only later did the men in the trenches learn that the attack covered a front of about sixty-five miles, the most pretentious the Huns had launched. Karl Rosner, the Kaiser's favorite war correspondent, wrote to the Berlin Lokal Anzeiger:

"The Emperor listened to the terrible orchestra of our surprise fire attack and looked on the unparalleled picture of the projectiles raging toward the enemy's positions."

Pennsylvania's doughboys and engineers shared with the then Prussian War Lord the privilege of listening to the "surprise fire attack," but to them it was like no orchestra mortal ear had ever heard. Most of those who wrote home afterward used a much shorter word of only four letters to describe the event. There was, indeed, a strange unanimity about the expression: "It seemed as if all ---- had broken loose!"

Crouching in their trenches, powerless to do anything for themselves or each other, they endured as best they could that tremendous ordeal. The very air seemed shattered to bits. No longer was it "the rumbling thunder of the guns," to which they had been giving ear for weeks.

Cras.h.i.+ng, ear-splitting explosions came so fast they were blended into one vast dissonance that set the nerves to jangling and in more than one instance upset completely the mental poise of our soldiers, so that they had to be restrained forcibly by their comrades from rus.h.i.+ng out into the open in their temporary madness.

Paris, fifty miles away "as the crow flies," was awakened from its slumber after its holiday celebration by the sound of that t.i.tanic cannonade and saw the flashes, and pictures were jarred from the walls by the trembling of the earth.

The regiments back in the support line were little, if any, better off than the four companies of Pennsylvanians up in the front line, for the Hun sh.e.l.ls raked the back areas as well as tearing through the front lines. Men clenched their hands to steady shaking nerves against the sheer physical pressure of that awful noise, but officers, both French and their own, making their way along the lines in imminent peril to encourage the men, found them grimly and amazingly determined and courageous.

As usual with the Boche, he had a schedule for everything, but it went wrong at the very start this time. The schedule, as revealed later in captured papers, called for the swinging of prepared pontoon bridges across the Marne at 1.30 o'clock, after one solid hour of artillery preparation, and the advance guards were to be in Montmirail, thirteen miles to the south, at 8.30 o'clock that morning.

As showing the dependence placed by the Germans on their own ability to follow such a schedule, it may be permissible here to recall that during the fighting an automobile bearing the black and white cross of the Germans was driven into a village held by Americans. It was immediately surrounded and a German major, leaning out cried, irascibly:

"You are not Germans!"

"That's very true," replied an American lieutenant.

"But our schedule called for our troops to be here at this time,"

continued the perplexed German.

"They missed connections; that's all. Get out and walk back. You are a prisoner," snapped the American.

The antic.i.p.atory artillery fire of the French had so hara.s.sed the Germans in their final preparations that it was not until two hours after their schedule time, or 3.30 o'clock in the morning, that the pontoons were swung across the river and the infantry advance began.

The Prussian Guards led. The bridges swarmed with them. The French and Americans loaded and fired, loaded and fired until rifle barrels grew hot and arms tired. Gaps were torn in the oncoming hordes, only to be filled instantly as the Germans pushed forward from the rear. The execution done among the enemy when they were concentrated in solid ma.s.ses on the bridges was terrific, and for days afterward the stream, about 100 feet wide in that section, was almost choked with the bodies of Germans.

The moment the enemy appeared, the excitement and nerve-strain of our Pennsylvania soldiers dropped from them like a robe from a boxer in the ring. Their French comrades said afterward they were amazed and deeply proud of the steadiness and calmness of these new allies. Their officers, even in the inferno of battle, thrilled with pride at the way their men met the baptism of fire.

All the new troops going to France have been "blooded" gradually in minor engagements and have been frequently in contact with the enemy before being launched into a major operation. Virtually the only exception to this was the case of the seven divisions of the British regular army that landed in France and were rushed at once into the maelstrom of the first German onslaught in 1914, retreating day by day and being slaughtered and cut to pieces constantly, until they were almost wiped out.

It was the intention that the Pennsylvania troops should be carried by slow and easy stages into actual battle, too, but a change in the Boche plans decreed otherwise. Thus, Pennsylvania regiments, with the engineers fighting as infantry, found themselves hurled immediately into front line fighting in one of the most ambitious German operations of the war.

The maximum German effort of the July thrust was made directly along their front. It seemed almost as if the enemy knew he faced many new troops at this point and counted on that to enable him to make a break-through.

But Pennsylvania held. The great offensive came to smash.

Official reports compiled from information gathered from prisoners and made public afterward showed that the enemy engaged fourteen divisions--approximately 170,000 men--in the first line in this part of the battlefield. Behind these, in support, were probably fourteen additional divisions, some of which, owing to the losses inflicted on those in the front line, were compelled to take part in the fighting. No figures are available as to the number of French, but their lines were so thin that Americans had to be thrust in to stop gaps, and there were fewer than 15,000 men in the Pennsylvania regiments.

CHAPTER IV

"KILL OR BE KILLED"

Nothing human could halt those gray-green waves in the first impetus of the German a.s.sault across the Marne. They gained the bridgeheads, and were enabled to seek cover and spread out along the river banks. The grim gray line, like an enormous, unclean caterpillar, crept steadily across the stream. When enough men had gained the southern bank, the a.s.sault was carried to the Franco-American lines.

Machine guns in countless numbers spat venomously from both sides.

Rifle-fire and rifle-grenade and hand-grenade explosions rolled together in one tremendous cacophony. The appalling diapason of the big guns thundered unceasingly.

Up the wooded slope swept the Hun waves. The furious fire of the defenders, whatever it meant to individuals, made no appreciable impress on the ma.s.ses. They swept to and over the first line.

Then, indeed, did the Pennsylvanians rise to heroic heights. Gone was most of the science and skill of warfare so painstakingly inculcated in the men through months of training. Truly, it was "kill or be killed."

Hand-to-hand, often breast-to-breast, the contending forces struggled.

Men were locked in deadly embrace, from which the only escape was death for one or both.

One lad, his rifle knocked from his hands, plunged at an antagonist with blazing eyes and clenched fists in the manner of fighting most familiar to American boys. They were in a little eddy of the terrible melee. The American landed a terrific "punch" on the point of his opponent's chin, just as a bullet from the rear struck home in his back. The rifle, falling from the hands of the German, struck the outflung arms of the Pennsylvanian. He seized it, even as he fell, plunged the bayonet through the breast of his enemy, and, the lesson of the training camps coming to the fore in his supreme moment, he gurgled out the ferocious "yah!" which he had been taught to utter with each bayonet thrust.

The companies were split up into little groups. Back-to-back, they fired, thrust, hewed and hacked at the swarming enemy. No group knew how the others were doing. Many said afterwards they believed it was the end of all things for them, but they were resolved to die fighting and to take as many Huns with them as possible.

Then came the great tragedy for those gallant companies. Something went wrong with the liaison service. It was such a thing as is always likely to happen where two forces of men, speaking different languages, are working in co-operation.

An officer suddenly woke to the fact that there were no French troops on the flanks of his command. The same realization was forced home to each of the four companies. The now famous "yielding defense" of the French had operated and their forces had fallen back in the face of the impetuous German onslaught. Four companies of Pennsylvanians alone faced the army of the German Crown Prince.

In the midst of that Gehenna of fighting, no man has clearly fixed in his mind just what happened to cause the separation of the line.

Certainly the French must have sent word that they were about to fall back. Certainly the companies, as such, never received it. Possibly the runners conveying the orders never got through. Maybe the message was delivered to an officer who was killed before he could pa.s.s it on.

Whatever the reason, the French fell back, and there were left in that fore-field of heroic endeavor only little milling, twisting groups, at intervals of several thousand feet, where our valiant Pennsylvania lads fought on still for very dear life.

The Boche hordes swept onward, pressing the French. The Americans were surrounded. Captain Cousart and a handful of his men were severed completely from the rest and taken prisoners. Lieutenant William R.

Dyer, of Carney's Point, N. J., and Lieutenant Bateman, of Wayne, Pa., at the other flank of Company L, and almost half a platoon met a similar fate. Lieutenant Maurice J. McGuire was wounded.

Lieutenant James R. Schoch, of Philadelphia, was next in command of Company L. Not far from him, Sergeant Frank Benjamin, also of Philadelphia, was still on his feet and pumping his rifle at top speed.

From forty to fifty men of the company were within reach. The lieutenant and the sergeant managed to consolidate them and pa.s.s the word to fall back, fighting.

Part of the time they formed something like a circle, fighting outward in every direction, but always edging back to where they knew the support lines were. They literally fought their way through that part of the Prussian army that had gotten between them and the regimental lines.

At times they fought from tree to tree, exactly as they had read of Indians doing. When they were pressed so closely that they had to have more room, they used their bayonets, and every time the Hun gave way before the "cold steel."

Here and there they met, singly or in small groups, other men of the company who had become separated. These joined the party, so that when, after hours of this dauntless struggle, Lieutenant Schoch stood in front of headquarters, saluted and said: "Sir, I have brought back what was left of L Company," he had sixty-seven men in the little column.

During the day other men slipped from the shelter of the woods and scurried into the company lines, but there were sad holes in the ranks when the last one to appear came in.

Company M was having the same kind of trouble. A swirl in the fighting opened a gap, and an avalanche of Germans plunged through, leaving Captain Mackey and a dozen men utterly separated on one side. It was impossible for them to rejoin the company, so they did from their position what the men of Company L were doing, fought their way through the Prussian-crowded woods to their own lines.

Lieutenant William B. Brown, of Moscow, Pa., near Scranton, senior officer remaining with the bulk of the company, became commander, but his responsibility was short-lived. He, too, was surrounded and made prisoner.